Ember and Sparks
by NightEmber88
Summary: This is the story of two girls who, in the middle of high-school, go missing for a night and return with wings. How and why has this happened? Along their way, they find more like them- mutants, and form a group.
1. Beginning

**Hey all! This is my first story, co-written with my best friend. This is the story of two teenage girls', who find themselves with wings, fake parents and a motley crew of mutants. It is based only on Maximum Ride, but there are some deviations, too. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer- JP owns MR**

Chapter 1- Karlie

_Bip...bip...bip...bip..bip.. .bipbipbipbipbiiiiiiiiiip!_

"Unghh..."I groaned. As I rolled over to murder my alarm clock, my greyish-blue sleep-sticky eyes reluctantly opened. It was Monday. Again. I slowly slid my tan legs out of my beautiful, warm bed into the freezing winter air in my room. Yanking the rest of my body out of bed, I scudded over to my wardrobe to do a random pick of my clothes for the day. I stuck my hand in a drawer and pulled out a navy blue shirt, while thrusting my other into the next drawer to retrieve a pair of jeans.

I hastily changed into my clothes, not wanting to be exposed to winter's icy grasp any more than I needed to. My mother insisted that I'd cope without a heater, even though she had one, the hypocrite. I dragged a brush down the tangly ravines of my hair, wincing at points, and tied it out of my eyes and into a loose ponytail.

I shrugged on a thick, light brown coat as I slunk down the stairs and into my least favourite room- the kitchen. This was the place where I had blown up some toast, massacred some noodles and made a bowl of cereal combust into flames (I still have no idea how I did that). All in all, cooking was my weakest point. For breakfast, I kept it safe and just ate fruit, because you don't have to mix one thing with another to make something that could burn your face off.

Still munching on an apple, I ran out the front door and all the way to school, which was only about four blocks away. On my way, I saw several late kids rushing to class like me, but I wasn't late. Everyone else was early, even if there was a set time for school to start.

As I slipped into class, Mrs Martha was calling roll.

"John Dumbbell?" I snickered immaturely.

"Here!"

"Tess Emmerson?"

"Present!"

"Karlie Goltz?"

"Here!" I answered.

"Jason Letterman?"

"Here"

I quickly tuned out the roll calling and looked down at my work for the day, already set out on my desk by our OC teacher. Bleugh. Science on a Monday morning is exactly the opposite of my cup of tea. I twiddled with my compass, doodling perfect circles all over my work pages.

"And Alex Zhou?"

"Present"

Mrs Martha then stood up and instructed the class on what to do for the first session. "9M, this morning we will be focussing on DNA. The students who have handed in their Workplace Health and Safety forms will be testing their DNA by pricking fingers and putting blood samples under the microscopes on the back desk." Everyone turned around in their seats to peer at the shiny, new microscopes. "9M! Your attention is over here! So, as I was saying, the other students without returned forms will be completing DNA booklets at their own desk. I will be at the microscope table, making sure no-one damages the scopes or themselves. Remember what happened last time I wasn't watching. Now let's go."

I smiled remembering how Joey had licked 'contaminated lemon,' which resulted in a trip to the hospital to reduce an inflated tongue-it looked like a pink cucumber!

For the rest of the session, I dutifully completed my booklet, as my mother (cue eye roll) decided that I wasn't allowed to prick my finger, and had thrown my note away.

I hurried straight from my science class to art class with Mr Beecher. This was one of the best classes for the week, and I was actually good at it. We were always loud and had a consistent stream of jokes running around the room. Mr Beecher was really fun, and was never strict. He simply told us an activity to do for the session, then went back to his desk to work on his own art. It's amazing. It always looks so real. He definitely has a very good hand for painting, but never boasts about it.

"Alright class, we'll be drawing the base picture for our assessments today. Pick a picture using the internet, something that you think that you can draw, and print it out, and copy that picture in HB pencil, to your sheet of paper. You can use A5 paper, A4, A3, hell, you can even use A2! But I need that base picture done by today, and by Friday, we'll be finished our assessments, and the due-date is Monday, just in case you need extra time to spend on details. Kay?"

Muttered "yep"s and "okay"s came from around the class, then everyone started moving around to an easel or a computer at the back of the classroom. I moved to an easel, which I shared with my bestie, Sophie. A smile lit up on her face when she saw me, making her brown eyes shine.

"Hey, Karlie! Do you reckon my picture's okay for the assignment?" She shoved a paper picture in my face. Once I had gotten the picture out of my eyes and focussed on it, I realised that it was of a pair of wings. Huh. I was sure I had seen that somewhere else. I creased my brow for a second, thinking. Aha!

"Hey Soph, you do realise that I'm doing the same picture as you?"

"What? Oh! Ah well, my wings are gonna be a different colour from yours." She shrugged and started on her base drawing, picking an A4 sheet of paper.

"Yeah, you're right. Anyway, yours will turn out way better than mine." Sophie seemed not to hear me, and continued drawing.

I sighed and leant back to get a closer look at my drawing-now-painting. Sophie and I were both quick workers, and we finished our base drawings halfway through the session. We were now onto painting over our drawing, but now we were each doing different colours on our wings. Mine were honey-coloured in the primaries, broan in the secondaries and the rest was white. Sophie's were totally different from mine, completely pitch black with white tips on her end feathers.

Anyway, I was really impressed with my work, but more impressed with Sophie's. It was amazing. She had a real talent for art. I wondered what we would look like with wings. Sophie with her black ones and me with my honey-brown-and-white ones. That would be so amazi-

"9M! That's it for today, you can go to lunch now! Don't worry, I'll collect your work." We all filed out of the room, taking about our works of art and about where we'd sit to eat and so on and so forth.

Sophie and I sat (or should I say perched) in our usual spot, up in the enormous maple tree on the edge of the eating court, and watched students mill around. For the whole lunch, we talked about random school related things, and the upcoming school event- the Halloween Dance.

Sophie and I trudged into our next class, stage band with Mr. Gray. We retrieved our instruments from the store-room, each with our tenor saxophones. The small band of about 20 filed into the prac room to unpack and get started with some scales.

As we laboriously unpacked our big instruments, Mr Gray whipped his gold, trumpet from its case, put the mouthpiece on, and promptly started improvising in D# minor... Show off.

"Rightio! Today we're gonna get a jump on some new charts. This'll be sight reading but it's not hard. The songs we're gonna get today are Thriller and Frankenstein." Mr. Gray shouted around the room.

Elated shouts from the band echoed around the room as we sat down and passed along the new music. "Okay!" Mr. Gray announced. "We're gonna start with Frankenstein. A one, two, a one two three four!"

After band, when everyone was shuffling around the halls to get to their next class, I remembered something. "Hey, Soph," she turned to look at me in answer, "would you like to come with me and my family to climb Mt. Rushmore tomorrow? We'll start at about 12 in the morning so we can get up there to see the sunrise."

"Oh cool! I'd love to!" Sophie was really excited. "But… what about school?" I sighed. Soph loved school. I have no clue why. It was as fun as watching paint dry (yellow, oil based paint, so that's really saying something). "We'll just skip school for the day, and say we we're sick, or going on a family day, which we are, really. It's easy enough! Deal?"

"Deal."


	2. Math

**School. Bleugh.**

Chapter 2- Sophie

I sighed. Next session, 6th, I had maths. Ughh, finally! Last bit of school for the day. I trudged into the room, barely noticing as our teacher, Mrs Steele, screeched out a joke for the class. Probably about her being some kind of queen squirrel (Don't ask). I grabbed a chair from the stack, put it under a table, sat down and promptly started my work, my absurdly long, dark brown hair flipping down into my papers annoyingly.

"Gah!" I whispered to myself. Whenever I cut my hair, it'd grow back easily past my waist, so it was pointless.

I was always disappointed in maths class, because Karlie wasn't in it. Instead she was in accounting class, which I just couldn't bring myself to do. All you do is sit there and look at taxes and stuff, and record it. Me, I'd way rather do maths than that unspeakable stuff, so that's why I'm sitting here right now, doing algebra and angrily pushing hair out of places in my face I didn't even know I had.

"Class! 9B! Algebra is easy! See, you have 'x' here, which is unknown. So, if we have say, 12 horses, but we times that amount of horses by the 'x' amount of horses, add 3 more, and we get 51 horses, how many horses is 'x' worth?" My hand shot into the air. Too easy! This was grade 7 work. "Yep, Soph?"

"'X' is worth 4 horses." Mrs Steele nodded and wrote down 'x'= 4 on the white board, and tapped the board near the sum twice.

"That's how you do it, 9B!"

For the rest of the session, I completed the ridiculously easy work, and was put on extension algebra, with more horsey algebraic sums covering the page.

I stumbled out of the class and rushed off to meet Karlie by our maple tree in the eating area. I scrambled up the tree and waited patiently for Karlie to arrive out of her accounting class. It was the end of school, so we had to be quick with our little meeting, as we only had about 15 minutes until the school closed completely.

_Snick. Sccccrrr._ I whipped my head around to the base of the tree, suspicious. Karlie was heaving herself up it, scratching herself on all the bark. "Karlie! Finally, I thought you weren't coming." I rolled my eyes to add to the effect. She huffed at me in annoyance. "It's not my fault that he thinks I was the one throwing paper balls at his head…" She grumbled.

"Were you?" She looked upat the sky guiltily, then changed the topic.

"Anyway, Soph, we'll meet up tonight at my house at 12am sharp, then we'll drive to Mount Rushmore, and climb."

**Filler chapter, sorry. Please review.**


	3. Mount Rushmore

**Action time! Keep reading.**

Chapter 3- Karlie

_Bip...bip...bip...bip..bip..bip.. . !_

I almost screamed at the goddamn alarm clock. Instead, I powered out of bed, grabbed it, threw it out the window and listened to the screeching machine end with a crash.I grinned evilly to myself as I head it meet its untimely demise(hehe get it?untimley?). I hastily dressed in something really warm, packed a bag full of food, a radio, a lighter, a sleeping bag, and a few more jackets. I quickly snatched a look at the time- wait, no I didn' I packed, I couldn't hear my family packing, even though they were supposed to be going with us.

I slung my bag over my back, slipped some gloves on and checked in their rooms. _Snore…snore_. Damn. They weren't up. I was going to have to call Soph to cancel the climb. As I groaned and reached for my phone, an idea struck me hard in the head. I'd just leave a note with my parents, and still go on the climb, because they know I'm familiar with the track, so I'd be alright. And if weren't okay with that, well they could go jump off a cliff.

_Tap...taptaptap...taptap...tap...tap_. Sophie. She was here, knocking our code on the door. We had a code in case there was a serial killer outside instead of Soph, so I know it's her (it _is _midnight). I silently slid in my socks over to the big wooden door at the front of my house and unlocked it, standing back as it swung inwards. I almost jumped out of my skin as Sophie opened her mouth to grin widely, shining her torch on her teeth only so I saw nothing but her enormous cheesy grin.

"Geez, Soph! Don't do that, it freaks me out!" She answered with an even bigger smile. Creep. "C'mon, let's go, we'll have to walk there now."

"What about your family? Aren't they coming too?" Sophie looked confused at my statement. We were supposed to be driven to Mt Rushmore by my parents and climb with them to the top to watch the sunrise, but no, they were still making spit bubbles in bed.

"They're still sleeping." _Lazy butts._ "We're just going to have to do the climb by ourselves. Doesn't really matter, I know the way, and besides, it's not a very steep climb."

We arrived at Mt Rushmore at about 12:30. It was only a short way from our houses, since we lived in Keystone, the closest town to the mountain. The walk was pretty cold, and we knew that the cold would only get worse as we climbed. We reached the entrance bit with the presidents carved out of the side of the mountain, and started to ascend a little further round the back, because on this slope, you don't need a rope to get up. We climbed for about 2 hours before we needed a little rest for water and food. We were almost at the very top and it was 2:45 in the morning. We found a little flat clearing just big enough to lie down in and slipped our bags off our tired backs.

"Hey Soph, do you think we should have a little nap now, or nap on our way down?" Sophie looked at me with sleepy eyes and said simply,

"Now." We dug our sleeping bags from our packs, lied them down on the ground and had some tinned food before bed. Well, before sleep, since we weren't using beds. As I scraped the last of the tomato soup out of the can, Soph removed her shoes and snuggled into her sleeping bag for the night. I dumped the empty tin in the rubbish bag and seconded her actions, firmly closing the sleeping bag around my neck to stop any cold night air from getting to me.

"Goodnight, Soph." I murmured to her. She said something back that sounded like 'G'nie, Kar-ie.' We both closed our eyes and fell asleep straight away.

At 3:27 (don't ask, my watch was still on my wrist), I was woken up by something rustling around in the bushes. Hmm, creepy. Maybe Soph had gone looking for a bird or something to take pictures of? She's always doing stuff like that. I looked at her sleeping bag and saw she was still encased in it, looking straight back at me with wide eyes. By the sound of the something, it was used to the environment and quite huge. Suddenly another rustling creature joined the first. Now I could hear two somethings, but couldn't see them. I struggled to release myself from my sleeping bag, fumbling with the zipper in my shaking, white-knuckled hand. Why were my parents so cheap? I looked desperately over to where Sophie was wrestling with her sleeping bag as well, my heart pounding faster and faster every second, the mysterious creatures creeping closer and closer, almost at us.

I finally managed to undo my zipper, and burst out of the bag, Sophie just ahead of me. We both scrambled to our feet and sprinted out of our clearing, the wolf-like creatures just inches from us. A piercing scream echoed through the mountainside and I whipped around to see Sophie struggling under a wolf-human mutant. Unfortunately, I gave a creature just enough time to pin me to the ground and pull out a chemical-stained cloth.

"Well this is going to be fun isn't it, little birds." One of the mutants whispered menacingly. They each then held the soaked cloths over mine and Soph's mouths, pinching our noses and forcing us to breathe in the chloroform-scent of them. As the world blackened, I remember a needle of some sort being thrust deeply into my side and emptied of its silver contents, but nothing else. I remember no more, no less, just that.

**Cliffhanger! Hope you liked it, please review. Feel free to give advice or ideas.**


	4. Mutations

**New chapter.**

Chapter 4- Sophie

It was well past midday when we finally woke up from our drug-induced sleep. The realisation of what happened last night dawned on me slowly. Then it all smacked me in the face.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." I also happened to notice that my ears were ringing, my head was pounding and most of all, my back felt as if it was on fire. The pain was so much that I could barely sit up to make some breakfast out of tinned food. Everything hurt. Sitting up, eating, and waking Karlie.

"Karlie. Karlie, wake up." I gently poked her face. When that didn't work, I started pushing her softly, sure she was in the same kind of pain I was in, and didn't want to hurt her. She didn't wake. Odd. Actually, maybe not so odd, since we'd both just been injected with shiny liquid and had chemicals forced into our lungs. But still, it was odd that I'd woken up before her and she wouldn't wake now, even though we were both injected with the liquid at the same time.

"Karlie! I swear to God I'm gonna-WAKE UP!" I shouted in her still-sleeping face, making birds fly away.

"WAKE. THE. HELL. UP!" I was red-faced now, yelling at the top of my lungs straight into her ear. She still showed no sign of even a slight disruption in her sleep. Geez. I sighed in defeat and went to make a small fire out of anything that might burn in the middle of where we were right now. Which is… nowhere. Great, just gre-

_Whump_. I whipped my head round to look where the sound had come from. Karlie. _Now_ she wakes up.

"Oww!" she exclaimed as she sat up slowly, obviously in the same pain as I was.

"You okay, Karlie?" I looked at her, concerned. "Have you got that pain in your back? Y'know, like it burns really bad? I've got it as well." She nodded and slowly reached over to a can of food and started slurping out the insides, thinking. Then she looked up at me.

"I reckon we stay here and rest until we have our strength back and those back pains are gone. Then we go straight back down." I contemplated her words and accepted, because we couldn't possibly climb down the mountain, with this amount of pain.

"Well it's not like we would be able to stand, let alone walk." I decided to make myself comfortable while I waited for the pain to fade away.

After a while, the pain still hadn't faded in the least and we still could only barely move, but it was night so we curled up to each other for body warmth and fell asleep on the grassy mountainside.

x-x-x

I awoke the next day to the sound of birds chirping and the pain in my back, which had doubled alarmingly overnight. When I looked sleepily around, my eyes fuzzy with pain, I saw Karlie studying me intently, particularly my shoulders. I raised an eyebrow at her in a questioning look. She shrugged and replied,

"There are two big lumps on your back, evenly spaced, just below your shoulder blades. They're about fist-sized, and it's kinda like you have something growing out of your back." She frowned and my eyes widened at the thought. I decided to ask her something as well.

"Karlie?" She looked up at me in answer, "Turn around so you're not facing me." Her eyebrows quirked up, but nevertheless, she still turned around.

"Karlie, you didn't realize this, but you've got those lumps on your back as well." I looked up at her face, and wasn't surprised to see shock and horror marring her pretty face.

"W-what do you reckon we do about them?" I bit my lip and grimaced then went to try and answer her question, but she spoke before I'd opened my mouth. "What if we're being infested by aliens or something and they are eating their way out from the inside us? What if-"

"We should just leave them be for a while and they should go away, because they're probably just oversized bruises or pimples or something. But in the meanwhile, we should head back to our camp and rest more, because that's what's gonna make 'em go away. If they actually are going to disappear. I hope." I was obviously doubting myself, these lumps seemed permanent. Karlie pursed her lips and slowly, agonisingly stood up and reached an arm out to me to help me up. I grinned at her and gripped her hand firmly, and she pulled me up.

"Which way do you reckon we ran last night?" Karlie asked me. I contemplated this for a minute, then answered her qualm thoughtfully.

"There should be footprints somewhere, and seeing as this is just dirt, they should still be visible." She nodded and we both started scouring the ground for some tracks. They were easily spotted by Karlie, and we followed wherever the prints came from, ending up right back at our camp.

We decided to lie down again and play pathetic games like Chinese chopsticks and clapping games (don't you dare say a word). I would normally never do this, but we were bored out of our minds. Literally. After a while of random chatter and games, we agreed with each other that we'd get some sleep, and definitely get off this wretched mountain tomorrow.

x-x-x

Pain. That's all I felt. Pure, sheer, agonizing _pain_. My back was having lit matches and whips taken to it, all over. I opened my eyes to strange, incredibly sharp vision, but shut them tightly again as a wave of agony overwhelmed me once more. It hurt so much I couldn't bring myself to scream, only to lay twitching on the ground, hyperventilating and drawing ragged breaths. A voice filled with pain joined me, but it was screaming. I recognised the voice to belong to Karlie, who was writhing and gasping.

Suddenly, all the terrible pains stopped. I sucked in cool air and worked on gradually slowing my race-car heartbeat. Relief flooded my confused and dazed mind. I looked around and saw Karlie lying on the ground, limbs splayed everywhere, with normal breathing and the word 'hallelujah' written all over her face. Then she started laughing, overly happy she wasn't in pain anymore. She laughed for what seemed like hours, me with her, then abruptly stopped. I tilted my head questioningly at her, and she opened her mouth to explain.

"I was wondering what happened to our backs and the lumps on them, if they really disappeared or not." I understood and silently turned around, my back facing her, for her to scope out what happened. After a few seconds of examining, she gasped and asked me, "Can you take your shirt off so I can see the skin? Don't worry, we're in the middle of nowhere, no-one's gonna see you." I nodded and pulled my thick shirt off over my head, leaving only my bra on, not noticing the cold. My back felt really weird, almost as if something had been attached to it.

"Holy Moly!" Karlie exclaimed with wide eyes.

"What, what? What happened?" I was anxious to know what was up with my back.

"I hope this isn't going to hurt you Soph, but here goes." Karlie reached forward towards my back and gently pulled on something joined to my back. She kept pulling and had to walk about 7 feet to the side of me, still pulling it. When I saw what it was, and saw it was on my back, I almost screamed.

It was completely onyx black, shiny and had a twin, on the other side of my back. Together they were about 15 feet long, and breath-taking.

_I had wings._

__**Wings, huh? Like it? Review it 3 times and I'll post another chapter soon.**


	5. Explanations

**Chapter 5, people. Please review this time, I'm new at this.**

Chapter 5- Sophie

In fact, I think they were so breath-taking I almost passed out from lack of air. But I didn't, because I was still breathing in order to...release my..._emotions_…

"Where the_ hell_ did those things come from?" I hyperventilated until Karlie answered me. "I think they're from those mutants with the big needles. It'd explain why they called us birds, now I think of it." I 'hmmmm'-ed at her answer, my breathing slowing. I wrestled my shirt back over my head and wings. Then I realised with a start that Karlie must have wings as well.

"Karlie. Turn around, I want to see if you have 'em as well!" She quickly spun around on the spot and removed her shirt, exposing her back. I could hear Karlie's breathing quicken as I studied her, purposely drawing out the time.

"Yup, you too." Her breath caught and she swayed slightly, clearly very, very excited.

"What colour? What colour?" I silently stretched out one of her wings to the side, like she had done to me, and brought it slowly round the front of her.

"They're... they're...w-wow! She said weakly. They were beautiful. My eyes darted quickly over her honey-coloured primaries, brown secondaries pure white end feathers, exactly like her painting in the art class at school.

_School_. Everything suddenly hit me. _Our parents_. We'd been gone for at least a week now, counting the time we were unconscious from pain. Our parents would be worried out of their minds. The police could be searching for us. Hell, we might even be counted as missing persons by now.

While Karlie looked at her new wings with awe, I hurriedly packed up the camp and stuffed everything into our bags. I had to scout around for some of our stuff, which had been buried the leaves everywhere. Dislodging our radio from under a hardened bit of dirt, I found it had been cut open, and was now just a pile of silver plastic and thin, multi-coloured wires. The job was clearly done with a knife. Maybe those creatures did it, probably to stop us from contacting police or anything while we were suffering. Creeps. First they inject us, then they leave us to suffer in 'peace and quiet'.

I shakily brushed it off and threw a bag to Karlie, who had now folded her wings up again, and she slung it over her back, as did I. She had put her blue shirt back on again and, as I realised, made two large slits in it for her wings to fold and unfold. I quickly shrugged off my bag, twisted my shirt around so the back was on my front, and used my penknife to cut slits in it as well. Satisfied, I donned my bag again and whipped out my new, night-sky wings, looking determinedly down the mountainside.

"Soph? Are you planning on flying back to town? Because I'm thinking we'll need a few lessons first." I rolled my eyes and explained to her,

"We won't need lessons because flying will probably be natural to us by now, that liquid they gave us has had enough time to get comfortable in our bloodstreams." I took a deep breath and took a running leap of faith into the air, unfurled my enormous wings and pushed downwards powerfully with them. At first I was scared as hell, but after a few strokes of my wings, I got used to it and hovered over Karlie, waiting for her to jolt into action and jump off the cliff.

"C'mon! It's not hard, just move your wings up and down, and you'll be flying!" She seemed to shake her head, and without a moment's hesitation, jumped into the air. Apparently she took my word and flapped her wings up and down, gaining altitude and flying over to me.

"This is so cool! I've always dreamt of flying, and now I'm actually flying! With wings!" I nodded knowingly and started towards our town of Keystone, beckoning Karlie after me.

x-x-x

When we had reached our town, we hovered overhead and discussed where we'd land, so we weren't seen with wings, flying, because that would be kind of awkward. We finally, after much arguing, decided to land in Karlie's backyard because it was on the edge of town and pretty big.

We landed badly and fell over sideways into the tall grass, but shot up quickly, laughing our heads off at our miserable first landing.

"Yours was worse than mine!" Karlie looked indignantly at me, but I knew it was true and hung my head in mock sadness.

"Shall we go inside, Soph?" she asked me in a fake British accent.

"Yes we shall." I replied in the same posh voice. We brushed each other off and knocked on Karlie's door, expecting the worst from her mother. We'd decided on the way back from Mt Rushmore that we'd tell only our families about our new wings, and nobody else.

The big wooden door opened without a creak, and Karlie's mother, Sonya Goltz's head poked round it, her mouth letting out a soft scream when she saw us, or more importantly, Karlie. She opened the door fully and pulled both of us into a big, perfumey hug, squeezing us to death.

"Girls! Where have you been? We've all been worried sick about you two!" She pulled us inside and sat us down on the couch, then sat down herself.

"Well," Karlie started to explain, "We were climbing Mt Rushmore, but you guys weren't up, so I left a note in the kitchen," Sonya nodded her head,

"But… while we were in our sleeping bags for the night, there were these two wolf-creatures and they, um, they… injecteduswithshinysilverstuffandnowwehave...we have…" Karlie was struggling to let out the truth, so I helped.

"We have wings…" my voice trailed off self-consciously. Sonya's face paled.

"W-wings? As in- feathery wings?" I nodded and caught Karlie's eyes, mentally telling her to show her mum. She winked, letting me know she understood me, and we both stood up in in front of Sonya. We glanced between us and made sure we had enough room for our wings, then unfurled them, her honey, brown and white ones, and my shiny, raven-black ones.

Oddly, a look of knowing dawned on Sonya's face, but without Karlie letting it slip. "What? Do you know something about this?" Karlie gestured to our outstretched wings. Sonya sighed, then started to blurt everything out.

"I'm sorry girls, but we aren't your parents, and neither are yours, Soph. You two were adopted from… from the… from the School." Sonya looked sheepily at us. "The School was where you were until you were both about 5, but one of the… whi-scientists there escaped with you and brought you two to Keystone, where we adopted you." Sonya took another two deep breaths before continuing, but shakily.

"The School was a place of horror. They… the Whitecoats, the scientists, experimented on you. They put needles in you every hour, they forced you two to fight other… mutants, to death, purely for survival, but you'd always win, no matter how injured you were. You… you're amazing, really."

Haunting images and terrible ideas raced through my near-explosion-ed mind, and horror clearly showed on my face, because Karlie reached to put her arm around me, even though she wasn't exactly unshaken either. Sonya continued on with our story.

"Anyway, when you were about 5, then, like I said, the scientist brought you to Keystone because it's remote. He found your mother, Soph, and I walking down the road and dropped you two in our arms along with a note, explaining all this." She heaved an enormous breath and continued steadily.

"At first, we thought he was mad, and wasn't telling the truth at all about you two. But now you have... you have wings so it really is true. He also tol-"

"Hang on. We must have had some recollection of the School, right?" Karlie questioned, interrupting.

"You don't remember it because before you left the School, the scientist who saved you gave you new memories of the families you're in now, so you weren't haunted forever. He did well." I sighed at this massive intake of shocking information, the asked Sonya,

"So, what's been going on with my family?" Sonya hesitated before slowly releasing her tide of words.

"They… they're uh… Soph, your-your parents are… they're-they're d-dead. They were driving and they-they just…" Sonya tried to hold back tears. I nodded numbly and said calmly,

"I understand. W-would you mind if I stayed with you guys for a while? I can stay on school, I-I have enough money for it."

Sonya nodded knowingly and accepted easily. "Sure, but we've got to find a way for your wings," she looked pointedly at our backs, "not to be noticed at school. I was thinking, maybe a wide strap that you attach everyday. But of course, you wouldn't be able to go swimming or to wear strappy shirts." Karlie and I both agreed and prepared for school tomorrow.

**Constructive flames and ideas please! Review! Virtual cookies and waffles for all that do! (::) [#]**


	6. Back to School

**Number 6 people. Please start reviewing, I'm begging you. Hope you like it. There will be action in the coming chapters.**

Chapter 6- Karlie

This morning I woke to the faded sound of my should-be-dead alarm clock rapidly beeping from outside my window, and Sophie's shadow on my face as she leant over me, grinning. I groaned and rolled over in bed, but Soph's thin hand wrapped around my shoulder and pulled me back, then brutally ripped my sheets off me. I automatically curled up, but to no prevail. Sophie grabbed the top mattress of my bed and pulled one side up, leaving me to tumble off my bed.

I finally fully woke up, and started to organize some clothes for myself. Sophie scooted over to where I was pulling clothes out of my drawers and started to ask me,

"Can I borrow some of-"

I cut her off with a short answer. "Yup."

She nodded and rummaged through my clothes until she found something satisfactory and covered up enough for her wings. We laid our clothes of choice (or in my case, randomly picking) on my bed and snatched up the wide straps for around our wings that my mum had bought yesterday.

"Here. Get yo butt over here, Karl." Sophie joked and reached out for my strap to clip it around my back. I obediently scudded over into her reach and passed over the strap. I quickly stretched my wings before folding them in tightly and letting Soph wind the strap firmly around my midsection like a bandage. I winced as my wings cramped up, but fought the pain as I slipped on a dark blue long-sleeved shirt to top my jeans.

Sophie waited patiently until I had finished dressing, shoved her strap into my hands for me to wrap around her wings, then turned around with her back facing me to make it easier. I tentatively wound the strap tightly around her raven-black wings, then asked her,

"Is that tight enough or too loose?" Soph flexed her shoulders, then tried to move her wings, but couldn't.

"It's a little too tight, but that's okay, we'll be able to stretch our wings tonight. I was planning on a little fly tonight, you up?" I smiled a little and agreed.

"Yup."

As Sophie wrestled her black long-sleeved shirt on, I checked in the mirror that I couldn't see my wings through my strap and shirt. Satisfied, I checked Soph's shirt as she used the jumping-method to pull on some black jeans. Nothing showed through.

"You're covered up. No wings showin'." She nodded and slipped on her trench coat. It wasn't even that cold, but Sophie was really iffy about weather.

"C'mon, breakfast's downstairs." I beckoned Soph down the stairs and into the kitchen, my torture chamber. I started pointing to cupboards and explaining their contents.

"Plates and bowls in here, this is the cutlery draw, pots and pans over there, the fridge has lots of cold stuff, and the pantry has lots of... not cold stuff. Kay?" She nodded and started to pull out a frying pan, an egg flip, eggs, vinegar and not-bacon. I stopped in my fruit-finding tracks and stared at her actions.

"Are you making eggs and... BACON? Well, not-bacon, but still. Can I have some?" I grinned and licked my lips. She looked at me with her 'duh' expression and stated,

"Yep, we'll go halves on it." I squealed excitedly and hugged her.

Sophie looked at me weirdly and asked incredulously, "I'm guessing you haven't had eggs and bacon in ages?"

I looked at her sadly in answer and said, "Nope. I couldn't cook to save my own life. I made a bowl of cereal ignite. Just last week."

Sophie barely suppressed her laughter as she flipped two eggs and a pile of bacon onto each plate.

"Bring them to the table, please." Sophie commanded me. I obeyed and set out knives and forks as well. Sophie waltzed over to the table with two glasses in a hand, salt and pepper in the other, the water jug under one arm and the juice under the other. She awkwardly set down the juice and water, then placed the cups and S and P in the middle of the table and sat down.

We quickly dug in and any noise in the house was reduced to just chewing and gulping noises. My parents didn't start work until ten, and my brother was on a break day from college, so he'd be sleeping in. My eyes wandered over to the kitchen clock and found it was ten past eight. Oh no. School starts at eight thirty, which means twenty minutes to finish eating, grab lunch money, brush teeth, grab bags and run full pelt out the door. Which was exactly what we did, only somehow faster.

We reached school five minutes before class started and dumped our bags in our lockers, minus what we needed for our first period. Spanish on a Monday morning. Just what we needed right after being unwillingly transformed into flying mutants.

When we got to class and started work with Mrs. Hernandez, the day turned into a boring, 'oh you're back!' day. Until last period of course. We had gym and sports.

After Soph and I had changed into our gym clothes, we waited on the oval for the rest of our class. When they arrived, with Coach in the lead, he blew his whistle and made an announcement.

"Okay! Class, today you will be running a four hundred meter race against your classmates. Girls first, boys next. The top two from each division will all race in a final hundred meter sprint. The top two from that race win. Today is also an assessment day, do your best!" Everyone murmured back 'okay's and 'yep's, then shuffled off to the start line of the four hundred meter track. Sophie and I took positions next to each other and tensed on Coach's 'get set.'

"Go!"

As we all took off, as usual, I stole the lead. Looking back to see Soph's position, I realized she was right beside me, which was very unusual. Two hundred meters into the race saw me and my friend breathing easily, with barely elevated heart rates and a good lead on the others. Sophie looked at me confusedly and I knew right away what she was talking about. She would never have gotten close to being in first place before the wings incident. I jerked my thumb towards my back and she nodded, grinning. As we crossed the finish line, we saw the others had at least fifty meters still ahead of them. I smiled back at her and plopped myself down on the grass, taking Sophie with me.

"I feel awesome. Just putting it out there," My companion still had that grin on her face. We sat in comfortable silence as the boys raced. The two that always win won once again and came jogging over to the start line of the hundred meter track. We joined them and took positions side by side, trash talking with our glares. 'You're going' down, girls,' 'pfft, as if, we'll kick your sorry butts into next week.' We were snapped out of our silent talking by coach yelling to get set.

"Go!"

As mutant bird kids, we absolutely whipped their slow butts. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all.

x-x-x

When we got home, we immediately slipped on our slit shirts to go for a fly, but decided against going in full light, so we plopped down on the couch to watch some TV for a while before flying. Before we knew it, dinner was close at hand, so, being lazy teenagers, we had toast as a meal. After a quick teeth brushing and hair-tying, we slipped out the back door, leaving a note on the fridge.

We walked into a covered clearing topped with tall trees, then furtively glanced around for any followers and took running starts to get in the air, flapping hard. Once we reached a good height, far from the people, Soph and I began to fly over the town, doing loop-the-loops, twists and bomb dives all the way. We were free as, well, birds. After maybe an hour, Sophie broke the silence.

"I love flying! It's just so… I feel so free! It's amazing." She smiled softly and looked at me.

"Want to go for another fly tomorrow night?" I asked her, already knowing the answer. Once again, she gave me her 'duh' expression and said nothing.

After another few hours, I started to feel tired, and called out to Sophie.

"Hey, let's go down, it's about bedtime and I'm tired." She agreed and we wordlessly landed back in our little covered clearing. I sighed contentedly and started back towards my house, my new sort-of sister in close tow. When we reached the house, we found my parents nibbling on popcorn in front of a movie on TV, all quiet at a romance scene, so we snuck upstairs and slipped into bed.

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	7. Halloween Nightmare

**My co-writer and I have decided to kill off a character. Later though. They get a very painful death (hehehe).**

Chapter 7- Sophie

The next day flew by quickly. Until we had to go shopping for the Halloween Dance tomorrow night, that is. Shopping isn't my thing, especially when it doesn't include the buying of books, and instead includes the buying of dresses and make-up.

Karlie and I walked down to the local shopping center, and busied ourselves in finding awesome costumes. I had no clue as to what to be. I've already been a devil, a cat, a witch, a spider and a corpse bride. Karlie had the same problem. After about an hour of trying to find something, we slumped down onto some chairs in the middle of the center and gave up.

I noticed Karlie shifting uncomfortably against the back of the chair due to her wings. Our wings! Jeez, we can't even find an outfit, let alone one to cover our wings. A true Halloween nightmare. Excellent. Karlie gasped quietly and I whipped around to see her. Her back was up straight and she had a light in her eyes which meant she probably had an idea for the costumes.

"What?" I asked.

"I just had an idea," she beckoned for me to come closer so she could whisper, "Let's be angels! All we need is a dress and a halo, and we could pretend our wings are fake." She smiled triumphantly and I smiled back. "Good idea, let's go." We got going and re-visited the clothing shops we'd already been to.

In the third shop, we found some long flowing dresses that looked fit for angels. They came in white and silver. "I'll be a demon or something, because black wings aren't angelic, okay?" She nodded and picked up the silver dress in her size. We made our way over to the dressing rooms, and I waited outside hers. She unlocked the door and let me slip in to check it fit her and her wings. It did.

I made my way over to the gothic shop two down from where Karlie was paying for her dress. Luckily it was on sale, so she paid quickly and joined me in the gothic shop, looking for a good demon dress for me. As I made my way around the shop, I noticed there was a particularly nice dress on the dressing room hanger. It was thigh length, strapless and had a leather lace up corset. It also matched the color of my wings perfectly and was in my size. I beckoned to Karlie that I had found one and was going to try it on. She came over and stood outside my dressing room like I had for her earlier.

As I slipped the dress on, I noticed it was a little tight because of my wings, but they'd be hanging out on the night. Otherwise, it fit perfectly and looked very nicely gothic. I opened the door a smidge and let Karlie in, careful for other shoppers not to see the wings. She looked speechless. Oh no.

"Soph! You look fantastic! You suit the whole gothic thing well. This is going to be one awesome dance." She grinned then squeezed back out as I changed back and re-hung the dress on its hanger. I exited and paid at the counter. It was sixty dollars but came down to twenty because it had been floating around the shop for a few years. I mentally danced like a ballerina in joy. Not physically. I picked up some black make-up from the counter as well and added it to my purchase. Costume- done.

Karlie was waiting for me as I left the store and we started on our way back home, rushing because it had started to storm. When we got home, it was dinner time, so we scoffed down some of the lasagna Sonya had made and hurried upstairs again. We changed into our slitted shirts and hastened back downstairs, but Sonya seemed to have put two and two together.

"Girls, no flying tonight, it's storming. You might get hurt." We sighed and sank into the couch instead. After a cookie for dessert, we headed to bed early. We were going to need it for tomorrow.

x-x-x

It was now Wednesday afternoon, and in the last session, no one was paying any attention to the class, they were so distracted because of the Halloween Dance that night. Karlie and I sat next to each other, working on the English assessment together. Finally the bell rang and the whole class ran out and hurried to get home. We did too, but faster; we were mutant bird kids.

At home, we had showers and some very early dinner of toast. After brushing teeth, we brushed our hair and Karlie and I curled and straightened our hair respectively. We coaxed Sonya into helping us with make-up, as neither of us wore much at all. It also takes a very long time. I'm talking an hour. For _make-up. _When we were done, we stepped back and looked at ourselves in the mirror, gasping.

Karlie had white and silver eye shadow, fake eyelashes, pale pink lips and perfectly curled hair. She was beautiful. We both were. No scratch that, I was horrifyingly beautiful. My hair was creepily dead straight, I had fake eyelashes and black eye shadow. Sonya had used dark blush to make my cheekbones stand out and my lips were blood red.

After Sonya had gone, we painted each other's fingernails, mine red, hers silver. As we waited for them to dry we watched some of _The Nightmare Before Christmas _and watched the clock slowly tick by. The Dance started at six and went until ten. It was currently five twenty. At five thirty, I decided my nails were dry, so I went upstairs, Karlie trailing.

I slipped my dress on, sliding my wings through the slots I had made straight after we came home. When Karlie had hers on, I asked for her to lace up the corset at the back for me. She complied, then went to stand in front of the mirror, her head tilted in awe. I realized it was twenty to six and followed my sort-of sister downstairs and into the garage, where we kept our shoes.

While she put on a pair of low heels, I slid my socked feet into my beloved almost knee-high combat boots. She grinned at the height of them, then left me in the garage while she went to grab her mum to bring us to the school hall. She was back in five minutes and we were off.

When we got there, all the car parks were filled out, so we did a drop and run, shouting 'thank you's as we departed the car. We got in just as the clock turned six.

As we walked in, there were lots of wolf whistles, so I followed Karlie to a more us-friendly area of the hall. It was dark inside and tons of decorations hung from the roof and the walls. We had been talking and partying for only five minutes when a group of boys came to harass us.

"Hey, girls! Those are some awesome wings you got there, where'd you get 'em?" We looked at each other and I quickly lied,

"Karlie's dad made them for us." They nodded and said,

"They work? Like, can you move them?" My companion nodded and pretended to pull a string on her back, spreading her wings out at the same time. I copied. They looked awed.

"Can I touch 'em? They look so real." My eyes widened and I answered shortly, "No, they're fragile." I pulled mine back in, once again pretending there was a string on my back to make them go in. So did Karlie, and we quickly moved away from them, leaving them complaining.

Everything went fine for the next three and a half hours, and we only had a couple more requests to show our wings. There was only a half hour left now, and we were pretty tired. Thankfully, the punch wasn't spiked this year, we heard rumors that it was last year, so we were still well hydrated.

In the last twenty minutes of the dance, we were confronted again by the first group of boys. Now I looked, they were easily seniors, but I had never seen them before the dance. As they came sauntering up, I noticed how perfect they were. Not as in, I like them, perfect but as in that's-creepy, not-a-hair-is-out-of-place-after-almost-four-hours -of-partying-perfect.

I nudged Karlie and gave her a look that said 'something's up with these guys' and she nodded slightly, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin.

"Hey girls. Can we take a picture of those awesome wings your dad made you?" I noticed the boy speaking wasn't the same one as before. In fact he wasn't anywhere to be seen. The boy pulled out his phone to take a photo of us.

I suddenly felt a hand in my feathers and knew what had happened. The group of boys had been distracting us while the leader from before came behind us to feel our wings. And I knew that he had realized they were real. Everyone knows the feel of skin and bones, even with feathers covering it.

"They're real!" The boy shouted from behind us. My heart raced.

"They're the ones! Mark, call the School, we'll hold 'em down. Now!" I hesitated for a split second before grabbing Karlie's hand and running full out towards the double doors. The senior boys were behind us, and running just as fast as we were. Everyone stopped dancing and looked on, shock plastered on their faces as we sped out onto the oval. The boys were catching up, and a quick look back at them told me they were the Erasers Sonya was talking about. Their faces were now elongated muzzles and their limbs were furry and hugely muscled.

"We're catching up, little birds." I heard the leader say. I was breathing heavily already, and I knew they were still getting closer. I turned to Karlie and asked breathlessly,

"Can you fly?" She nodded, also breathing hard and we leapt into the night sky, unfurling at the last second. We worked on getting some altitude, because the Erasers were jumping at us. After we were out of reach of them, I sighed in relief. But my happiness was quickly quenched when I saw what was merely twenty meters from us. A helicopter loaded with more Erasers, with guns.

I breathed in sharply and tried to get away from the copter, but it was too fast for us. The Erasers started jumping out of the helicopter one by one, and I realized with an enormous dread that they had wings as well. They'd be able to chase us now, so there was no point running. We had to fight. Karlie knew this, and quickly got into a rusty fighting stance, which had clearly never been used. As the Erasers got to us we started fighting, desperate for our lives. We slowly took down one each, finishing them off with reluctant bone-cracking punches to the head or that little area where the sun don't shine. After two more each, there was only about 8 left. But that's when I heard the scream.

I whipped around, frightened and saw Karlie falling to the ground. I dived after her, knowing that if I didn't catch her, she was gone. At about fifty meters from the ground, I caught hold of her arm, but her momentum was too much and her shoulder dislocated. I still held on and managed to slow our fall as I grabbed onto her back and held our heads down, so as not to hurt them too much when we hit. Twenty meters from the ground, I realized the Erasers were shooting at us, so I twisted around, putting myself in firing range to make sure Karlie wouldn't be hit, she was hurt enough already. The ground came up rapidly, and I braced myself for impact. As we hit, I felt a white-hot pain explode in the base of my neck. I groaned as we kept skidding and rolling, then finally came to a stop.

I pressed a hand to my neck and realized there was blood pouring down from it. I must've been nicked by one of the Eraser's bullets. Not good. As the world faded, I looked over to Karlie and sighed in relief after seeing she was still breathing, and not shot, but had a massive bruise blossoming across her forehead and down the side of her face. Something like that could've killed a human. I closed my eyes as the pain in my neck grew. As everything went white, I remember feeling a heavy net fall over the top of me and Karlie.

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	8. School (NOT the educational one)

**Yellow! Sorry for the delay, I'm furiously writing as we only have a few more chapters in reserve now. You readers are eating them all up! Hope they're yummy.**

Chapter 8- Karlie

As I woke up, I felt a massive bruise forming over my forehead and down to my right cheek. I groaned and opened my eyes, jolting only after five seconds of staring at my surroundings. I was in a large white room, filled with cages. And I was in one. In a panic, I swung around, looking for Sophie. I sighed in relief as I spotted her sleeping in the cage next to me, on the corner of the block of about sixteen cages. On my other side was an unmoving, scaled, four-legged racoon. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness for it, because it probably wouldn't ever start moving again. Sophie shifted beside me and I turned back around to face her as she woke up. As her eyes opened, she saw me and smiled with an 'oh, you're okay' look. She quickly sat up, but soon started wobbling back and forth. "You dizzy?" I asked her. She shook her head, but as she did, she cried out and held her neck. "What? Are you hurt?" She seemed not to be able to speak currently, so she said yes by blinking twice and mimed a gun, its trigger being pulled then pointed to her neck. As realization dawned on me, the door to our room clanged open and two Erasers and a man in a white coat marched in. They stopped in front of our cages, and we sunk back in them. "Okay. You," The whitecoat pointed to the Eraser on his left, "Will grab experiment 20AH7, and you," he pointed to the other Eraser, "grab experiment 20AH8." They complied and this first Eraser unlocked my cage while the second unlocked Sophie's. They grabbed us and pulled us roughly from our cages, smirking successfully when they earned a cry of pain from my friend.  
"This way, we're starting surgery in joining rooms 20AH33 and 34, okay?" The Erasers grunted in agreement. We were cuffed and led through winding white halls. Sophie looked at me, scared and mouthed the words 'the School.' I nodded and hung my head. We were back at the School, where we were created. As we walked around the last white corner, the whitecoat jangled his keys as he selected one from his many and slid it into the lock of the third door on the right. As we were walked in, we were uncuffed, but immediately slammed onto the metal lab tables and held in place with thick restraints around our wrists, ankles, stomachs and necks, and once again, a cry escaped from Sophie's lips as an Eraser pulled her neck restraint tighter. Within seconds, a whitecoat had plunged a syringe into our arms. As I went under, I saw the metallic gleam of something sharp in the whitecoat's gloved hand.

When I woke up again, I was back in my cage again, watching Sophie sleep. After an hour or so, she stirred and woke up. She then pointed to me and scrunched her nose up. I looked down at myself and realised I was wearing some pretty ugly hospital clothes, but instead of a dress it was shorts and a shirt. "You too," I said. She looked down and scrunched her nose again in distaste. She sighed and rested against the bars of her cage. After a few more hours, I asked, "Can you talk yet?" She shrugged and tried saying something. "W-we need t-to get out of he-" she promptly stopped and coughed hard for a full minute. "Here, sorry. What do you thi-think they did to us?" I had no idea. "Well I heard them say something abou-" she coughed again. "About uh, giving us elements." I raised an eyebrow and inquired, "When was that?" "Oh, I think you were out already, he injected you before me." She gestured to me and I nodded. I sighed and silently wondered what they had done to us. The School really was just as bad as my mum's descriptions.  
After a little while, we fell asleep, exhausted from the day's events. Not everyone gets to be a mutant bird kid, forcefully shoved into cages and given who-know-what. We slept for about five hours before we were woken by a whitecoat barging in to grab another experiment from behind our cages. We groaned and sat up in unison as we watched GH5702 be pulled from his- her? -cage.  
It was disgusting. Not the experiment being pulled from its cage (although it wasn't really a pleasant sight), but the whole idea of experimenting on not only animals, but humans. Who ever thought of genetically modifying their own species?  
I sighed in frustration and gripped the bars of my cage, rubbing my hands up and down them quickly. I smelt smoke and saw it leaking from between my fingers.  
_Snap. Srcack! _We gasped in surprise as a bolt of pure purple electricity jumped from my hands, and as I pulled my hands away from the bars, a ball of lightning formed just over them. I looked at it in awe and as soon as I glaced at Sophie in surprise, it disappeared.  
"I… did you see that? I-I made a… do you think this is one of the 'elements' they were talking about?" I asked, still looking at my hands. Sophie nodded and scrutinized her own, probably wondering what kind of elemental force would suddenly jump out of them.

**:D Powers!**


	9. Plans

Chapter 9- Sophie

As soon as that ordeal was over, we either slept or passed out. Either way, as we woke (or came to) to a bunch of whitecoats surrounding our cages with notepads and pens.  
It looked to me like there was some sort of a tour being led by the scientist that had retrieved GH5702 before, 'Aerona' it said on her name tag. She looked just the part of a mastermind scientist, with her black hair, pale skin, and deep green eyes. I almost growled at her; she looked like she was some kind of leader or director, and she clearly enjoyed mutating life forms. She was probably one of the founders of this horrible practice.  
The group stared at us as Aerona Bologna (don't ask) pointed, and they took notes as they moved to see our wings. As one neared my cage I spread my wings suddenly, banging them against the bars and frightening the whitecoat. I snickered while Karlie cracked up laughing and Aerona glared at us evilly. I just smirked back.  
"Thompson. See to it that this one, AH32-8, is-" as she stopped herself, a smile dawned on her face. "Actually, Thompson, I think we should use these two little birdies as our demonstration. Now, though, have you both received your elements?" I was taken by surprise and stared blankly at her. Luckily Karlie answered for me.  
"I have, but not So- uh, AH32-8." She looked worriedly at me and I mirrored her emotions. Aerona barked a laugh and retrieved a syringe from her white coat pocket, filled with a blood-like substance.  
"Your arm," she commanded, with her hand outstretched. I'd already learned not to be uncooperative, so I reluctantly slid it through the bars, and she jabbed the needle in at the pit of my elbow and pushed the liquid into my bloodstream. I gasped at the cold sensation spreading through me and instantly wrapped my arms around myself for warmth. I rubbed my arms up and down, trying to get feeling back into them.  
Instead, by doing just that, I made my arms glow a dull red of hot metal. I quickly thrust my steaming hands away from myself and stared at them. I wasn't being burnt, and I didn't even feel any warmth from them. I smiled slightly, thinking of how unbelievable it was.  
"Ah. So electricity and heat emerge first," Aerona smiled to herself. "It's good enough, I suppose. Thompson, Smith, retrieve them from their cages and bring them to… let's see, room- AH01-13. Place them in the shackles."  
Shackles? What kind of 'demonstration' was this? Two of the men following Aerona transformed- surprise, surprise –into erasers, then opened our cages with hairy, clawed hands, and roughly pulled us out. Handcuffs snapped around our wrists and we were led down numerous white, disinfectant-smelling corridors to a room labelled AH01-13. Once inside, the erasers shoved us to the wall, and chained us there by our wrists and ankles, with about 2 meters of chain on each shackle. We faced a massive one-way mirror. And that one way was not on our side, so I guessed the whitecoats and a few more erasers were on the other side.  
"Mutants," came Aerona's voice through a speaker system somewhere above our heads, "Prepare yourself and your elements." I took deep breaths and raised my hands in front of myself, palm out, ready to shoot fire. Karlie did likewise, ready to shoot electricity.  
The door slid open and about 8 erasers entered the room, clearly ready to fight. As soon as the door shut, the shackles dropped to the floor and off our wrists and ankles. I sighed in relief and copied Karlie by moving into a fighting pose.  
And then they attacked us. They moved quickly to surround us, and leave us fighting 4 erasers each. The foremost one to me swung a quick shot at my head and I ducked, spinning, and caught him in the legs, sweeping them out from underneath him. I shot up quickly and smashed a powerful shot into an eraser behind me. But, in doing this, an eraser on the side ploughed into my left ribs and sending pain through my entire body. I gasped, winded, but was still quick enough to put a crippling blow to his neck, and he dropped to the floor, dead. My heart leaped in the exact opposite of joy as I looked at his bent neck.  
As I hesitated though, and gave the last eraser enough time to kick me in the right thigh, hard. I, infuriated, used my wings to shoot up high and dive bomb his head and shoulders, rendering him instantly dead. 2 down, 2 to go. I felt an eraser running at me from my right, and at the last second, I ducked down as if to play leap-frog, and he tripped over me, sending him flying into the wall and slumping down unconscious.  
The eraser originally behind me circled with me before leaping. I jumped and flew up, leaving him to crash into Karlie's last eraser, knocking him out, and leaving one to go. Karlie and I teamed up and I smacked him hard upside the head while she delivered a massive kick to the base of his spine. He jerked spasmodically and fell to the floor.  
Breathing heavily, Karlie and I shared a 'high-five, but not really' look before Aerona's voice came loud and clear through the sound system.  
"Subjects AH32-7 and -8, you will be taken to your cages." I smirked to myself as I heard the irritated tone in her already irritating voice. More erasers came through to handcuff and shackle us.  
As we were taken down the hallways again, I memorised the route and took note of a massive window on the way before we were slammed back into our cages.  
I sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time this hour, then tapped the bars of Karlie's cage to get her attention. She looked at me with a black eye.  
"Are you hurt?" I asked.  
"Not really, just a black eye and probably bruised ribs. And a massive headache." She replied wearily. I nodded, then leant closer and whispered.  
"I've memorised the route from here to that AH01-13 room. I reckon we could escape, because there's an enormous window on the way there. We could smash the window and fly out." I smiled.  
"Um, but what about the whole getting out of the cage thing?" She looked doubtful. I answered by placing by hands through the bars of the cage and on the lock. I concentrated hard and before I knew it, my hands were glowing and the lock was bright red and mouldable. I pulled it apart like blu-tac and swung the door of my cage open. When I looked back at Karlie, she was grinning. I smirked back.  
She was quick to place her hands on her lock and heat it with her lightning. She bent it off and opened her cage, then stepped out and stretched. I followed, then walked silently to the door of our room and motioned for Karlie to be quiet. I opened the door and did a quick check to see that no whitecoats or erasers were following. I led Karlie down the hallways in the same direction we had gone before and stopped before the turn to the big window, hearing voices.  
"Reckon they'll be conscious?" An eraser's rough voice echoed through the hall. "Yeah, I can't wait to shoot 'em if they're 'disobedient.'"  
My eyes widened. They had guns, and they were coming our way. So close! I looked to Karlie and she motioned to keep going. I made a hand motion, saying they had guns. She rolled her eyes and whispered almost inaudibly into my ear, "As they come round the corner, we'll take them by surprise and get some shots into their spines or something, there's only two." I nodded and waited for them to come round.  
As they stepped around, we darted out and attacked. Karlie took the grey one, while I handled the brown one. We almost simultaneously snapped hits to the bases of their spines and watched them crumple. I took their guns and thigh holsters, then joined Karlie at the window. I handed a gun to Karlie and we shot twice at the glass and kicked it out into the air.  
We jumped out the window- or lack of one- and spread our wings at the last second. Gaining altitude, we grinned crazily, then put on the power and started to fly into the distance.  
_Blam! Blam-blam-blam! _Erasers had arrived at the window and were shooting at us with handguns. I heard a yell to my left and saw Karlie clutching her right arm with a bullet graze on it. We kept flying around the bullets and after a few seconds, there were just clinking noises. The erasers were clearly out of bullets.


	10. Escape!

Chapter 10 Karlie

As we flew into the cloudless sky I looked behind me and saw a small town surrounded by lots of land which explained why the the school we had been in previously had be so abnormally massive.  
My arm was throbbing as we flew and suddenly it occurred to me that it could get infected. I looked towards Sophie and gestured down at a bunch of trees nearby, and she nodded in understanding.  
When we landed I quickly shredded my hideous hospital clothes and wrapped my arm tightly. Now all I was wearing was a ragged half top and shorts. "Why did it have to be Winter?" I said rhetorically to Sophie. She just smiled ruefully, looked away and proceeded to sit down on a nearby branch. I could tell she was in deep thought. I balanced myself on a branch directly opposite so that I was facing her. "Where are we going to go?" she murmured. I grinned; I knew the perfect place, the city where anything can happen, where freaks are normal. We were going to New York.

We had been flying for at least 6 hours, so when I saw the sky scrapers of New York begin to form on the horizon I nearly did a happy dance (which is pretty hard when you're flying). Instead I just squealed and tapped Sophie on her bony shoulder, angling myself above her. "Good, my wings are getting stiff!" Sophie shouted over the gale force wind. I shivered and started to soar over the updrafts, where it was slightly warmer. From down in the maze of streets below we probably looked like some sort of overlarge bird but seriously, who looks up? I had been to New York once before and seen all the famous sites, which included the Empire State building, Madame Tussauds, the Statue of Liberty and last but not least Central Park, the perfect place to go when you want to hide. Once we were over the top of the humongous park I tried to spot the most isolated part where we could hunker down for the night. Sophie beat me to it and pointed to a patch that was covered by towering trees. I looked at my feathered friend and nodded, then swooped down, landing in the out stretched branches. I found a comfy nook in the ancient tree and relaxed into it. Looking over at Sophie, I could see the she too could not be bothered with food no matter how hungry she was. Tiredness won over us. "Peace out," I muttered and with that I was dead to the world.

The next morning I woke to the familiar sound of birds chirping happily in my ears. Literally. There was one perched on my nose, singing away. I moved gently, scaring it away, and pulled my knees up to my chest in an attempt at warmth. Sophie had done the same thing and was leaning against the tree, clutching something rectangular in her hand. I groaned and tried to ask her what it was, but it came out as a trollish kind of murmur. Somehow, she understood my new language. "It's a credit card,"- I arched my eyebrows- "addressed to us. I don't know why it's here, I just found it on the ground at the bottom of this tree. I think maybe it's the school deciding they're going to stalk us," she dumped some information. "Well at least they can be helpful once in a while. What about the pin?" She shook her head, and in response, I sighed. Laying my head on my arms, I brainstormed possible ideas for pin numbers of our new card. "Want to go test it out? We'll go down to the closest ATM and try it," Sophie suggested. I shrugged and slid slowly off the tree branch and landed with perfect reflexes on the ground. A few seconds later, Sophie joined me, copying my jump. We made our way to the closest mall (trying to ignore the stares, we were wearing ripped hospital clothes), and found a small ATM into which we inserted the credit card and started the attempt at our pin number. We tried our birthdates, our year levels, and a whole heap more. But, in the end, it turned out to be our experiment numbers at the school- 3278. Just like the school to do that, hey? Proceeding to our account, we quickly (taking in consideration the line of frustrated people waiting for the ATM) selected a $200 cash take out, grabbed our money and card and ran into the nearest Walmart, intending to spend it on clothes and food. We did just that, and found some more suitable Winter clothes for ourselves. Then, drawn to the luscious smell of burgers, we spent 10 minutes at Burger King, getting a good feed. At last, we returned to our tree to dress and use our beautiful new piece of technology- the long lost _hairbrush_. No sooner than we were nice and snug, Sophie suggested we find somewhere more suitable to camp than a tree, so we went in search of a nice, cheap search, using our flying devices to get a good look at the hotels from the air. After a few hours of searching, we settled on the _Sheraton_ in Weehawken, just parallel across the water from Broadway.


	11. People! p1

Chapter 11- Sophie

I awoke to a loud knocking on our room door, at about midday. Wow, I love sleep, but hate when it's interrupted. I dragged my eyes open, then sprung out of bed and redressed in my only clothes which I had bought yesterday.  
I went to answer the impatient knocker, but before I opened the door, I remembered our advertisement we put out yesterday. It must be in the papers by now. I squinted through the peephole and saw a tall teen boy about my age with golden-brown hair, pale skin and an angular face. His eyes were downcast as he knocked.  
I looked around quickly at our room, checking if it was clean. Old habits die hard, I guess. Karlie had just come out of the shower, having woken before me, and was fully dressed. I motioned for her to make the bed while I answered the door knocker.  
"Password," I demanded through the door.  
"Whitecoats," he answered. Well there you go. A fellow mutant.  
I unlocked and swung open the door, then swept my hand towards the table, motioning for him to sit. He looked around cautiously first, then sat, playing with the sleeve ends of his ragged jacket. Karlie and I sat opposite him, prepared to interview.  
"So, I'm Karlie and this is Sophie. What's your name?" Karlie asked.  
"James Grayrose. Or AH87-13," He answered with a sarcastic tone. "Okay. Mutations or powers?" I queried.  
James hesitated slightly before saying, "I have heightened abilities and senses, but I don't know which animal they're from. I can also breathe underwater." "Well, if you'd like to, you can join us," Karlie said. James nodded absently, twisting a silver ring around his finger, which was possibly the only possession of his that wasn't clothes.  
"We should show you our… mutations too," I realized. We glanced at each other, and rolled our wings out. James' blue eyes grew slightly and I smirked. Karlie held her palms out and generated her purple electricity.  
I went next, holding my hands out. I conjured my heat, but something felt wrong. I looked down at my hands and saw one red and glowing, but blue ice shards dancing over the other. I looked to Karlie for advice, but when I did, she gasped at me. I sent her a questioning look, but wasn't answered.  
"It's probably just another side effect of the School," Karlie said nervously. James was silent.  
"Well that was… weird. Who wants room service?" I diverted the attention from myself. My companions nodded eagerly, and Karlie was quick to pick up the phone and dial the service number.  
"What do you guys want?" I thought for a few seconds, different types of food whirring through my starved mind.  
"I'll have… 2 boxes of butter chicken and a lemon lime and bitters," I decided.  
"I'll have a chicken burger and… water," James said. "Okay, 2 butter chickens and a lemon lime and bitters"- I nodded- "a chicken burger and water"- James dipped his head- "and… I'll have 3 veggie burgers," Karlie relayed to the receiver. "Yes, I am sure we want that much food. I do know the cost," Karlie rolled her eyes. "Okay, thank-you."  
Karlie retrieved her new credit card and slumped into one of the lounge chairs by the door, anxiously awaiting her lunch as I assumed my previous position- lying spread eagled on a bed. James sat on the desk chair, leaning on the desk with his hair spread over his closed eyes.  
After an incredibly long 20 minutes, there was finally a knock at the door and a call of room service. Karlie sprang up like a cat pouncing and whipped the door open to reveal a short Hispanic lady with a piled-high tray of steaming finger-licking-goodness.  
"Hello! So it was 2 butter chickens, a chicken burger, 3 veggie burgers, a lemon lime and bitters and a water," we all nodded hungrily, "The total cost comes to $72.50, please."  
Karlie passed her the money, then accepted the tray and kicked the door shut. She set our lunch on the desk and pulled up a chair for herself while I did the same.  
The next 20 minutes, there was complete silence, save for the chewing and swallowing noises coming from 3 hungry mutant-kids. Karlie was the first to finish, then James, who immediately slumped back down onto the desk and resumed sleeping. He must be tired. I was last, always a slow eater.  
After lunch, we all sat or lied down somewhere and had about an hour of shut-eye. I woke first, and realised it was very quiet. Too quiet for my restless brain. So, I softly drummed my fingers on the bedside table. At the first tap of my fingers, James woke immediately, then after a minute, went back to sleep. I did it once more, and James' reaction was the same. _Odd,_ I thought, then succumbed to the darkness pulling me under.

Once again, I woke to knocking on the door, but this time at about 9:00am. James was up already and had found cereal and milk in the mini-fridge. Karlie was stirring under the plush covers of her bed as I made my way to the door. Using the same routine, I asked, "Password?" The girl outside, who was younger than me and had a head of short blonde hair replied with a barely audible 'whitecoats.' I granted her access and motioned for her to sit down. Since Karlie had slunk off into the shower, I started the 'interview' by myself. "Hey, I'm Sophie, he's James"- he half-smiled- "and Karlie, my friend, is in the shower. You?"  
"Elizabeth Bracken, I think. I don't remember much from before I was taken to the school," She said, frowning. I nodded, and then asked, "What's your mutation?"  
"I can do… this, whatever it is," Elizabeth said, and stood a meter away from the table. She closed her eyes, seemingly concentrating hard. I felt my jaw drop when holes started appearing in her, allowing me to see straight through her. When they disappeared, she walked up to the wall, leant against it, almost as if she we hugging it, and sank through it. Her amazing performance was ruined though, by Karlie's shout from the bathroom. "Ah! How did you even get in here, through the wall?" I snickered and saw Liz (a nickname for Elizabeth) sink back in from the wall, which obviously led to the bathroom. She was pink-faced with embarrassment. I wrapped things up. "So, if that's it, you can join us in our quest to stay safe and away from the School if you want." "Yes please, I've been lonely for ages. But, I do have one more thing. I have a perfect body clock, which is a little useless, but you'll never need a watch again if you're with me," Liz smiled lopsidedly.

**Hope you're liking the story, next chapter's a funny one. :D**


	12. People! p2

Chapter 12- Karlie

We were still lounging around the now slightly crowded room a slight murmur every now and then but for the most part it was silent. You can imagine how high we jumped when there was a knock on the door (trust me, when you're a genetically modified mutant, that is extremely high). I was the first to the door and opened quickly without looking or asking who was on the other side. As soon I opened the door I quickly slammed it closed again. Sophie gave me a questioning glance and walked over towards me. I smiled sheepishly and then proceeded to turn back around to speak to the door. "What's the password?" "Whitecoats," the voice replied from behind the door. "Are you sure?" I said, standing there and making no move to open the door. What can I say, I had already opened it once and I really couldn't be bothered to open it again. Sophie gave me an exasperated look and grabbed the handle to open the door for me. I beamed at her in response and then pranced to her spot on the sofa. I could hear Sophie apologising in the door way then feet padding lightly over the checkered hotel carpet followed by slightly larger thumps. I looked down at the carpet below me and pondered who and what this person would be like. Is it a girl? What's its mutation? Does it like chocolate? Wait forget that- "My name's Jason." Said a voice rudely interrupting my inner conversation, I looked around the room trying to locate the smooth voice that had done so. I couldn't see anyone new in front of me and everyone else seemed to be looking just past me. I tilted my head backwards so that I was looking above and behind myself. There were chocolate brown eyes looking directly down at me! Sophie ushered him into the centre of the room so that everyone could see him clearly. Boy did I get a good view. He looked just a bit older than me. He was wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged his tall and muscular frame. His hair was a shade of brown that went well with his tanned skin. I could have sworn that he had walked straight out of a magazine for sappy, love sick teens. "Name?" asked Sophie. "Jason," he replied. "Now, show us your abilities!" said Liz with an exited voice. Suddenly there was a blur and then he was back, If you had blinked you would have missed it. "Man! That's so cool!" I shouted across the room.

"I know," Jason stated simply with a grin. "So, what are your abilities?" He asked the room. Elizabeth was the first to stand, give her name and show her power. To do this she did the same thing as before, this consisted of slipping into and out of the bathroom (luckily there wasn't someone in there this time). Next up was James, who introduced himself and explained that he didn't know what his ability was apart from being able to breathe under water and his heightened senses . This earned a sceptical look from Jason who wasn't too impressed. Finally Sophie and I stood up and together and introduced ourselves. With that out of the way we spread our glossy wings so that everyone could see their magnificent glory (what can I say, I love our wings). Then purple sparks erupted from my left hand and to my surprise and delight a ball of water hovered above the other. Sophie grinned at my beaming face and let her heat and ice surge out of her hands. This seemed to get more approval from Jason. I looked out of the small window, and through the condensation I could see the dark night sky. The day seemed to have passed as quickly as Jason's speedy legs. I smiled at the thought. I flinched when I heard Sophie yawn unexpectedly next to me. "'M tired." She murmured lazily through yet another yawn. "I'll get the sleeping arrangements while you go get ready for bed." I replied. Sophie just nodded and scuffed her way to the bathroom. "Ok," I spoke to the group, "If you are a guy then you're sleeping out here; either on the sofa or the floor. There are two of you so I'll grab blankets for you, as for the pillows you can use the ones on the sofa. Questions?" James and Jason shook their heads. "Good. Now Elizabeth, there is a spare bed in the master room so you can sleep in there, Sophie and I will crash on the double bed." With that I turned around and grabbed my pj's just as Sophie came out of the bathroom which I was heading towards. I never quite got there though. A knock on the door interrupted. Sophie walked in her sullen, black pyjamas towards the door. I honestly don't think she remembered that she was wearing them. Well, the knock on the door was either a complementary dinner, or a very late comer to our newly formed group of misfits. Somehow I strongly thought it was the latter.

**Don't you just love James? He's my character! See, me and a friend are writing this fanfic together. My characters are Sophie, James and Liz; hers are Karlie and Jason. By the way, there is no excuse for saying our characters are not life-like, as they are all based on real people, Sophie and Karlie especially. Review! :D**


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